Advertising glossary
Every term that actually comes up when you're running ads, explained in plain English — with the formula, what counts as normal, and a calculator where one helps.
Metrics
CTRCTR is the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it — clicks divided by impressions.ROASROAS is how much revenue you get back for every dollar of ad spend — a ROAS of 4 means $4 back for every $1 spent.Break-even ROASBreak-even ROAS is the exact return at which your ads stop losing money — 1 divided by your gross margin.LTVLifetime value is what an average customer is worth across the entire relationship, not just their first purchase.AOVAverage order value is the mean amount a customer spends in a single transaction — revenue divided by number of orders.Conversion rateConversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the action you wanted — conversions divided by visitors.FrequencyFrequency is the average number of times each person saw your ad — impressions divided by reach.Impression shareImpression share is the percentage of the auctions you were eligible for in which your ad actually appeared.
Costs
CPMCPM is what you pay for one thousand impressions of your ad — 'mille' is Latin for thousand.CPCCPC is what you pay each time someone clicks your ad — total spend divided by total clicks.CPACPA is what you pay for one conversion — total spend divided by the number of conversions.CPLCost per lead is what you pay for one enquiry — ad spend divided by the number of leads generated.CACCAC is the total cost of winning one customer — all sales and marketing costs divided by new customers.
Bidding
Learning phaseThe learning phase is the period after launch or a major edit when the platform is still working out who responds to your ad.Quality ScoreQuality Score is Google's 1–10 rating of how relevant your keyword, ad and landing page are — and it directly changes what you pay.Ad RankAd Rank determines the position of your ad, combining your bid with your Quality Score and your ad assets.Bid strategyA bid strategy tells the ad platform what to optimise your bids toward — clicks, conversions, or conversion value.Smart BiddingSmart Bidding is Google's automated bidding, setting a different bid for every individual auction based on signals about the searcher.
Targeting
Match typeMatch types control how loosely Google may match a search to your keyword — broad, phrase or exact.Broad matchBroad match lets Google show your ad for any search it judges related to your keyword, including terms sharing no words with it.Negative keywordA negative keyword prevents your ad from appearing for searches containing that word or phrase.Lookalike audienceA lookalike audience is a new audience the platform builds by finding people who resemble a list you supply.RetargetingRetargeting shows ads to people who have already visited your site or engaged with your business.
Mechanics
ImpressionsAn impression is a single instance of your ad being shown — one person seeing it three times is three impressions.ReachReach is the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once, however many times each of them saw it.Ad fatigueAd fatigue is the decline in performance that happens once your audience has seen the same ad too many times.Search termA search term is what a person actually typed, as opposed to the keyword you bid on that matched it.Lead formA native lead form collects the enquiry inside the ad platform itself, so the person never leaves Facebook or Google.Conversion trackingConversion tracking reports back to the ad platform which clicks produced a result, so it can optimise toward more of them.PixelA pixel is a small piece of code on your website that reports what visitors do back to the advertising platform.Attribution windowThe attribution window is the period after an ad click or view during which a resulting conversion is still credited to that ad.Landing page experienceLanding page experience is Google's assessment of how relevant and usable the page behind your ad is — and it feeds into Quality Score.